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News & Commentary - Archive 2009

Professor of Public Policy and Political Science Bruce Jentleson examines prospects for improved U.S.-Syrian relations. Jentleson and colleagues from the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Stimson Center met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in January for substantive talks on shared interests in the Middle East.

Lessons of history show that the economic recovery needs the worker rights reforms in the proposed Employee Free Choice Act in order to succeed, say Professor of PPS and History Robert Korstad and doctoral candidate Max Krochmal.

For the last eight years, U.S. military leaders and President George W. Bush knew what they wanted to accomplish in the short run in Iraq, but the long-run objective was less clear. According to John Lewis Gaddis, they lacked a “grand strategy.”

Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University, delivered the Von der Heyden Distinguished Lecture Thursday at Duke University’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy in front of a standing-room-only crowd.

I found Slumdog Millionaire, nominated for best picture, an uplifting film. It tells the story, sorely needed in these times of economic despair, of a young man making good despite incredible odds. If Jamal Malik can overcome such severe handicaps of birth and circumstance, the film says, then despair is unwarranted.

Journalism legend John Carroll, who served as editor-in-chief of the LA Times from 2000 to 2005, spoke about the problems with corporate ownership of newspapers and the difficulties the Internet has created for the industry.

The "digital divide" is the gap between people who have easy access to digital technology and those who don't. Like technology itself, the digital divide is changing rapidly, and countries differ widely in the their approach to the problem.

Photo Exhibit Displays ‘Disparate Worlds’Arye Carmon, president of the Jerusalem-based think tank Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), will present a lecture and exhibition of his photographs at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy on Monday, Jan. 26.

“A Struggling Democracy Confronts Political and Governmental Ethics: The Case of Israel” begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Rhodes Conference Room. The event, which is free and open to the public, will include a reception and exhibit opening immediately following the lecture in the Sanford Building lobby.